spread kindness

Last Tuesday I flew to Key West and landed just in time to see my friend, Tim Glancey, and say thank you, before he passed away later that night. The next morning, while describing Tim to another friend who had not met him, I described my mentor and very first business partner as a caring, loving person, always giving and helping to others.

me with Tim Glancey in Key West, 2015

The friend I was speaking with is a fellow teacher at magic camp and a highly creative and outside-the-box spiritual counselor. He suggested that there was a clear way for me to honor Tim’s life: by acting the way he acted, with gentle kindness, with selfless giving, empathy and love.

To honor Tim, this is what I’ve focused on this week in my personal life. But for many of us, a large portion of life is spent at work. How can we exhibit these qualities of selfless giving, empathy and love in our professional lives? And why is it important?

When I work with clients and interact with their employees, it’s often easy for me to intuit the nature of their leader. Turns out that businesses with empathetic leaders have measurably higher performance.

Those leaders who master empathy become better leaders — leaders who are able to inspire others and impact their businesses.

Our brains look for patterns so that we can identify and move on to the next thing. That’s why it’s easy for a magician to fool you. We do the same thing with people: generalize their behavioral norms and match them (for good or bad).

Being nice to your co-workers — not just tolerating them, but actively working to make their day more pleasant — can make things better for you, too.

Where is your focus?

We all have so many opportunities to help—family, friends, strangers—through out time and attention, through our advice and support, through our acts of reaching out and our acts of following through.

As I’ve focused on embodying Tim’s best qualities, I’ve found ample opportunities to be giving, loving and caring. Through phone calls, video messages, texts and snaps, we can all virtually connect to someone and brighten their day.

And through a look, a touch, a gesture, a quiet pause or a thoughtful question, we can directly connect to someone in our lives and help balance out the goodness on this earth. Let’s do this at home and let’s do this at work. Let’s be good to one another. Until next time…